Distribute buttons vertically

I have a series of three buttons and I am trying to get equal space between them and align them to the first one in the list (which is the farthest one to the left). This has worked for me in multiple projects using the align/distribute vertically and align/align left commands in the Arrange menu. However in this current project when I select the three buttons and try to distribute vertically it spreads them all out and aligns vertically within the whole slide (not using the top and bottom buttons as the constraint from which to distribute). Likewise, when I use the align left button, instead of aligning with the left-most button like in all my other projects, it is aligning everything with the left side of the slide. Any idea why this project is behaving differently from all others?